the mystical theology of valentin weigel - DataSpace at Princeton ...

God, because he is God, is necessarily perfectly righteous, and therefore must have
assigned each thing to its proper place perfectly rightly. “It is the righteousness of God
which orders everything, setting boundaries, keeping things distinct and unconfused,
giving each thing what it inherently deserved.” 577 To modern, egalitarian sensibilities,
this is a problematic situation when it comes to describing the earthly church, not to
mention Lutheran and Weigelian sensibilities, where Luther’s dissenting movement
aimed to remove hierarchical barriers preventing access to God, arguing that all
Christians are (or could be) priests, all Christians are equally equipped to read the Bible
for themselves. However, Dionysius’ views on hierarchy should be understood in the
context of his views on God, and specifically on God’s unity. That is, God is not to be
thought of as the “first and highest being” from which all other beings proceed, because
this would mean that “only the highest beings would be in immediate communion with
God.” 578 However, “since God is not any being but ‘all things in all things and nothing in
any,’ he does not stand at the top of the universal hierarchy but transcends and permeates
the whole” 579 and thus, “the entire hierarchy of reality,...from the highest seraph to the
least speck of dust, is the immediate presence and manifestation of God, of unity and
goodness, according to the different modes and degrees that constitute the different levels
577 DN, 894A-B.
578 Perl, 73. This, however, does not say anything about the relationship between beings within the
hierarchy, only about each rank’s relationship to God. So while, say, a geranium (a living but nonintellectual
being) might have the same immediate relationship to God as an Angel (a living, intellectual
being), the geranium would still, presumably be subject to the Angel. But although one might not worry so
much about the rights of a geranium, the situation gets more difficult when Dionysius introduces the
Ecclesiastical hierarchy, which sets bishops above priests, and priests above laypeople. While each might in
fact also relate immediately to God, each is still subject to its superior—laypeople to the authority of priests,
and priests to the authority of bishops. On this account, it is not difficult to see why Dionysius’s writings
might have been seen as invaluable allies in a defence of the hierarchical Roman Church against Luther’s
attacks.
579 Perl, 73. The Dionysius citation is DN, 872A.
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